Many large business organizations may use enterprise applications to manage their day-to-day operations. In today's corporate environment, enterprise applications may be complex, scalable, distributed, component-based, and mission-critical. They may be deployed on a variety of platforms across corporate networks, intranets, or the Internet. They are data-centric, user-friendly, and must meet stringent requirements for security, administration, and maintenance.
A terminal emulator, such as Unisys Web Enabler, is a set of run-time components that may permit workstation access to a host system over the network so that customers can have easy access to business applications. The host system could be a mainframe or similar centralized server and the business application developed in 3GL languages or a 4GL tool like Unisys' Agile Business Suite. A terminal emulator may be used as an interface tool to present a character-based screen of information (based on 24 rows and 80 columns of data) from the business application on the end-user's workstation. Using a terminal emulator, one can quickly put a user interface onto end-user's real-time transactions on the Web and offer potential customers an easy point of entry into business operations.
However, this may present some security and privacy issues that may need to be resolved. One desired functionality of an enterprise application may be to implement security controls tailored to a particular client and log all print activity for future analysis. Other controls, like a restriction on copy/paste functionality to authorized users may also be implemented. There may be a desire for use of such functionalities with a terminal emulator.